Long vacation from MOP and now I'm a little lost. Advice requested

Okay, I stopped playing around the time the Isle of Thunder was just being released. I barely scratched the surface of it and still am not sure what I'm supposed to be doing there. I stopped playing the game in April or May and now I'm back and wanting to not only get into current content but experience the expansion in order as much as I can.

The last thing I remember doing was a scenario to help Vol'jin do something in the cave full of Saurok leading from 4 Winds to Kun Lai. I don't remember lore wise how that fit in with the story and a friend forced me into to doing it prematurely before I'd gotten to the quest or whatever the sent me to that scenario.

1: For instance, the Barrens Battleground events, can someone explain to me how that triggered? And can I still experience everything via scenarios that leads up to the Siege of Orgrimmar, or was some of it temporary and live server events and not in scenarios or instances?

2: Obviously the Vale has been shattered by Garrosh, I saw the cut scene on Youtube, is there a place in game where I can see it from an NPC? And where in the time line does that happen?
3: And now on the Timeless Isle, I really have no idea what I'm doing there or why. It does not help I was a little inebriated when I first checked it out, I've been getting over a tough break up and a lot of this last year is a blur to me.

My iLevel is 490 and the farthest I've raided progression wise is the Terrace of Endless Spring.

Should I gear up doing Throne of Thunder LFR or should I focus on find 496 gear around the Timeless Isle? I'm thinking ilevel wise I should stick with Timeless Isle drops.

you can use burden of eternity on unidentified boa gear from the endless isle. that will upgrade the item to lvl 535 (it will make the item bop tho). with 500 valor points you can upgrade it another 8 ilvl

the barrens events was last patch. As far as I know nothing is going on there at the moment.

you can use burden of eternity on unidentified boa gear from the endless isle. that will upgrade the item to lvl 535 (it will make the item bop tho). with 500 valor points you can upgrade it another 8 ilvl

the barrens events was last patch. As far as I know nothing is going on there at the moment.

I have no idea what Burden of Eternity is. I have found items on the Timeless Isle the first night there I could randomly get a 496 item from it seemed. Guess I'll search the term you provided.

The Barrens Event, I am asking if it's possible to still see it as a scenario or if it was live. I can't get into the game atm to see for myself and am curious,if you know.

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One last question.
Should I still try to do the legendary cloak quest in your opinion, peeps?

I just basically did the same thing as you. You could queue for ToT LFR but they might take a while to pop. You just need to come up with 496 ilvl to queue for SoO LFR. I found all the chests, got two burden of eternities and I think I was there at that point. Google for a timeless isle guide, that'll likely be what you need.

Okay, I stopped playing around the time the Isle of Thunder was just being released. I barely scratched the surface of it and still am not sure what I'm supposed to be doing there. I stopped playing the game in April or May and now I'm back and wanting to not only get into current content but experience the expansion in order as much as I can.

The last thing I remember doing was a scenario to help Vol'jin do something in the cave full of Saurok leading from 4 Winds to Kun Lai. I don't remember lore wise how that fit in with the story and a friend forced me into to doing it prematurely before I'd gotten to the quest or whatever the sent me to that scenario.

1: For instance, the Barrens Battleground events, can someone explain to me how that triggered? And can I still experience everything via scenarios that leads up to the Siege of Orgrimmar, or was some of it temporary and live server events and not in scenarios or instances?

2: Obviously the Vale has been shattered by Garrosh, I saw the cut scene on Youtube, is there a place in game where I can see it from an NPC? And where in the time line does that happen?
3: And now on the Timeless Isle, I really have no idea what I'm doing there or why. It does not help I was a little inebriated when I first checked it out, I've been getting over a tough break up and a lot of this last year is a blur to me.

My iLevel is 490 and the farthest I've raided progression wise is the Terrace of Endless Spring.

Should I gear up doing Throne of Thunder LFR or should I focus on find 496 gear around the Timeless Isle? I'm thinking ilevel wise I should stick with Timeless Isle drops.

4.Beyond gearing up, if I just want to see the lore of the game in proper order, how should I go about that from the Terrace of Endless Spring?

I know this is a lot of hand holding but if anyone feels like assisting me, I'd very much appreciate your advice and information. Sorry if it's confusing.

1. The Barrens event was during 5.3, when 5.4 came out every1 got a FoS for it so it's no longer possible

2. It happens right before 5.4 , and to my knowledge there is no NPC that can show it to you

3. Timeless isle is an endless grind for 496 gear, and some 535 pieces via the Burden or by buying from vendors for coins. Other things to do are rares for nice toys or gear, and the 2 world bosses, also there's the Celestial Tournament quest if you're into pet battles. As for your gearing keep doing isle till you can queue for SoO LFR, also do ToT LFR in the mean time to speed the gearing up and to speed up the legendary progression.

4. Do the new scenarios, fallow the quests from in front of your Shrine that will lead you to 5.1 and 5.2 events, and the legendary quest it self will explain a lot

1. The Barrens event was during 5.3, when 5.4 came out every1 got a FoS for it so it's no longer possible

2. It happens right before 5.4 , and to my knowledge there is no NPC that can show it to you

3. Timeless isle is an endless grind for 496 gear, and some 535 pieces via the Burden or by buying from vendors for coins. Other things to do are rares for nice toys or gear, and the 2 world bosses, also there's the Celestial Tournament quest if you're into pet battles. As for your gearing keep doing isle till you can queue for SoO LFR, also do ToT LFR in the mean time to speed the gearing up and to speed up the legendary progression.

4. Do the new scenarios, fallow the quests from in front of your Shrine that will lead you to 5.1 and 5.2 events, and the legendary quest it self will explain a lot

1: For instance, the Barrens Battleground events, can someone explain to me how that triggered? And can I still experience everything via scenarios that leads up to the Siege of Orgrimmar, or was some of it temporary and live server events and not in scenarios or instances?

It was a temporary event for 5.3. Some of the flavor items still drop at a low rate off Kor'kron, but the armor sets and titles are unobtainable (the item set models are obtainable via the Darkmoon Faire for the original classes, Naxxramas for death knights, and low-level questing in the Stonetalon level range for monks).

2:

Obviously the Vale has been shattered by Garrosh, I saw the cut scene on Youtube, is there a place in game where I can see it from an NPC? And where in the time line does that happen?

When you complete Siege of Orgrimmar, you get a quest from Shaohao to meet him in the Vale. He plants a tree in the Sha-scarred desolation, which fills the same role as Tirion's statue in Dalaran and Deathwing's jaw remnant in Stormwind/Orgrimmar (it lets you view the boss-kill cutscene), and the quest implies the Vale will heal in time. Ingame, though, they plan to keep the Vale damaged as a sort of reminder of the effect the factions had on Pandaria.

edit: Misread. You can see the 5.4 cinematic on first logging into the game, but otherwise, yeah. YouTube or WoW official site.

3:

And now on the Timeless Isle, I really have no idea what I'm doing there or why. It does not help I was a little inebriated when I first checked it out, I've been getting over a tough break up and a lot of this last year is a blur to me.

Sorry to hear. :c The Isle itself is generally just a catch-up/place full of nifty things the devs put in as a time-waster for bored 90s; in-lore it's described as a temporal anomaly and does some groundwork for Kairoz learning to manipulate timelines without unraveling the timestream as such tampering was hinted to do in the Caverns of Time lore in TBC. That plus Kosak's (not very subtle) implications at Blizzcon point to Kairoz being the one responsible for sending Garrosh to the Alternate Draenor at the beginning of the pre-expansion event.

My iLevel is 490 and the farthest I've raided progression wise is the Terrace of Endless Spring.

Should I gear up doing Throne of Thunder LFR or should I focus on find 496 gear around the Timeless Isle? I'm thinking ilevel wise I should stick with Timeless Isle drops.

I'd say go ahead and gather up a set of 496 gear, and if you're lucky, you can get a ton of 535 Timeless gear (not including upgrades) for almost every slot by farming Burdens of Eternity. There's at least one chest that it's a guaranteed drop in, but it requires some careful navigation and a few terrain tricks if you don't have a legendary cloak for easy access to the Ordon Sanctuary.

4.

Beyond gearing up, if I just want to see the lore of the game in proper order, how should I go about that from the Terrace of Endless Spring?

Hm.. Terrace > 5.1 Dominance/Shieldwall > Isle of Thunder > Throne of Thunder > Timeless Isle/Siege of Orgrimmar. I'd recommend reading Shadows of the Horde since it covers the time span from Garrosh's assassination attempt on Vol'jin through his return to Durotar to launch the revolution in 5.3, from Vol'jin and Chen's POVs.

The sheer fact that we have people being so asinine as to split hairs over the exact definition of content is a sign that there isn't any worth discussing for non-raiders.

as for gearing up:
- HC scenarios (ilvl 516 stuff, weapons as well)
- farm timeless isle (make sure you get all the one-time chests; use timeless coins to buy kukuru's cache keys; you can also buy some mogu runes of fate to use in ToT and on oondasta/nalak )
- do warforged seals quest and use them on celestials and in SoO
- you can also buy some ilvl 522 for valor